


Guiding Him Home

by JoMouse



Series: Sterek Week 2020 [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, M/M, Phobias, Pre-Relationship, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Stereklyrics6, sterekweek2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27271783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoMouse/pseuds/JoMouse
Summary: Derek is afraid of the dark. Stiles finds out.Inspired by the song "Nightlight" by Illenium.
Relationships: Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Sterek Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985668
Comments: 26
Kudos: 140





	Guiding Him Home

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings and Salutations!
> 
> I don't know how many of you know me other than what I write, but I LOVE music so I always get really excited when it's time for a 'words and lyrics' theme. However, I was stumped for this one. Now, I very rarely listen to the radio or new music, I'm a big believer in "If I'm meant to hear a song, I'll hear it" and wouldn't you know, someone asked me to change from the 80's station at work to something else and the song [Nightlight by Illenium](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klp-RReW0jY) came on. I had NEVER heard it before and immediately, I knew what I had to do.
> 
> I loved writing this, although I'm not sure how it came out (I'm nothing if not insecure). I hope you love reading it!
> 
> Biggest thanks to my beta [Marie](HTTP://quietzap.tumblr.com) for betaing and cheerleading and just being awesome. You are an angel, lovely!
> 
> xx-Joey
> 
> Don't know 'em. Don't own 'em. Don't show 'em.

As a child, Laura would tease Derek endlessly about his fear of the dark. “We’re wolves, Derek, we can see in the dark.” It didn’t matter, if there wasn’t a source of light in the room or the moon bright above him outside, his chest would grow tight and he would freeze up wherever he was, unable to move forward until his mom or someone else was there to guide him home.

When he was seven, his dad sat him down and told him about his own fear of water, but Derek had argued that he was the best swimmer in the family. “I wasn’t until I met your mother,” he’d explained. “Somehow, when I’m with her, my fear is gone. Maybe one day, you’ll meet your fear chaser.”

He would dream every night of his fear chaser, wondering if he or she was actually out there in the world. He would try to picture them, try to see if every person he met would make his childish fear disappear only to still find himself terrified to the point of petrification while in the dark. 

When he turned ten, his mother had given him a keychain. It was a moon that glowed in the dark. It charged during the day and held its glow for hours; it was just enough light to make Derek feel safe. He carried that moon everywhere with him and clutched it to his chest as he stood outside of his house as it burned to the ground with his family inside.

Even with the keychain in his hand, he thought about his fear chaser, tried to imagine their face. He wondered if everyone had a fear chaser, if they were like the soulmates his sisters would giggle about after sneaking downstairs to read the trashy romance novels that were his Uncle Peter’s guilty pleasure. 

When he’d first met Paige, he’d thought she was the fear chaser but as he held her in his arms in the dark of that cellar, he was paralyzed with his fear even as he ended her life. He knew Kate wasn’t his fear chaser, he was always afraid when in the dark with her, but he was still so numb from Paige’s death that he hadn’t cared. His paralysis was entertaining to Kate and she’d tease him relentlessly about him; he was fortunate she’d never found out about the keychain.

After the fire, his fears got worse despite the moon keychain. He was more afraid of the things that went bump in the night than he ever had, despite Laura’s teasing that  _ he _ was one of those things. He kept the moon keychain hooked to his belt loop so it would charge during the day and keep him safe at night. 

Despite the teasing, he noticed the moon nightlight that appeared in his room in New York about a month after arriving and how Laura always passed the room on her way to bed to turn it on. She might have teased him, but she was his big sister, his Alpha, and she loved him.

After she was gone and he was surrounded by teenagers, something happened. The keychain got lost the night he killed Peter, the night he became an Alpha. So, on top of having all these confusing new powers, he was never meant to have, he was without his nightlights, his security blankets. Even though his sight was heightened even more, the darkness less dark, the fear was still there at the very base of it all.

He managed to fake it at first by focusing on Scott’s eyes, carrying a small flashlight, little things that never worked as well as the keychain had for so many years. He kept an eye out for replacements but it wasn’t an item that seemed to be easily found. One night, in a fit of desperation, when Stiles was staying over at Scott’s, he snuck into his room and used his limited tech savvy to scour the internet as much as he could in a failed attempt to find another keychain.

A week later, the pack was on a patrol, trying to find something that was terrorizing the animals in the preserve. Derek was paired with Isaac while Scott and Stiles were off together. Somehow, he’d managed to get separated from Isaac just as the sky darkened even more due to an oncoming storm. Although it was only early evening, the woods around him became midnight black.

Derek flashed his eyes but even that didn’t cut through the darkness. His entire body froze up and he felt his chest seize as everything in his brain began screaming in fear. He tried to focus on his wolf but even his wolf was having a complete freak out; he had a moment to wonder if this is how Stiles felt when he smelled of anxiety and terror.

Just when he thought that he’d never take another breath and collapse to his death right there in the forest, proving he was the world’s worst Alpha, there was a flash of lightning that lit up the sky and set him forward a few steps before he was plunged into darkness and paralysis again. Another lightning strike and Derek fell to his knees and prayed into the darkness that someone or something would come and save him.

He heard the trees creaking around him as the wind picked up and he managed to crawl forward a couple of feet during the next lightning strike as it faded away into more darkness. Whimpers left him as he struggled to hear anyone around him. He was ready to curl up and just pass the night in terror when a sound broke through that of the storm.

It was uneven and faint but growing closer and Derek knew even without moving, without scenting, without looking, that it was Stiles. He forced open his eyes that he’d shut when he’d given up and saw a slight glow coming through the woods towards him. He swallowed as he felt his fingers stretch and claw at the dirt beneath him. The closer the glow came, shimmering with the beating of Stiles’ heart, the more of him he was able to move.

As Stiles, surrounded with the softest glow, like that of the keychain his mother had given him, stepped out from between the trees, Derek’s body burned with movement and he launched himself at Stiles. 

“Woah, there, big guy,” Stiles cried as they crashed to the ground, Derek on top of him, trying to bury his face in his neck. “You’re shaking.”

Derek pulled back, knowing his ears were burning red as he looked at Stiles’ face, the glow still there but slight. “How are you doing that?”

“Doing what?” he asked.

Derek opened his mouth to explain when he heard his father’s voice in his head.  _ “Somehow when I’m with her, my fear is gone.” _ “Nothing,” Derek said instead, moving carefully to his feet, keeping his eye on Stiles the entire time. He reached out and pulled Stiles to his feet by one hand and then didn’t let go.

Stiles glanced at their hands intertwined between them and then nodded, giving Derek a small smile, the wind picking up again and blowing his hair around just as the rain began to fall. “C’mon, let’s get going home. Isaac found us and he and Scott came across a scent trail. You’ll never believe what they found!”

“What?” Derek asked, memorizing the feel of Stiles’ hand in his as he let himself be led back to where they’d left Stiles’ Jeep and Scott’s motorbike. 

“A mountain lion!” Stiles said, screaming and lifting their joined hands in a ‘what can you do’ type of gesture. “The big bad monster for once is actually a mountain lion!”

The rain picked up and they were both soaked to the skin, but Stiles didn’t seem to mind and the glow stayed just enough to keep the fear at bay, so Derek wasn’t going to complain or rush. When they reached the Jeep, they saw Scott’s motorbike was gone. There was a note stuck under the Jeep’s windshield wiper but it was too soaked to make out more than the words “Isaac” and “home”. 

“Well, why don’t we get you back to the loft,” Stiles said, frowning when a bolt of lightning and crack of thunder happened simultaneously. “Or, maybe you want to come to mine and watch movies? My dad’s working all night and I really don’t like storms.”

Derek smiled as he got into the Jeep. When the lights came on, Stiles’ glow disappeared. “I’d like that,” he said. 

Stiles buckled his seatbelt before turning the key. The Jeep started right away and he did a little dance making Derek grin, earning another little dance. He shifted gears and they started to reverse when Stiles suddenly hit the brakes and Derek would’ve brained himself on the windshield if it weren’t for his werewolf reflexes. 

He glared at Stiles who was reaching over the backseat and batting around before coming forward with a mailing envelope in his hand. He dropped it in Derek’s lap. “For you,” he said, as he continued to back out and started driving towards his house.

“What’s this?”

“Open it and find out,” Stiles told him, taking his eyes off the road for a split second to give Derek a grin.

“Asshole,” Derek muttered, biting back a grin; he loved getting presents and he hoped that was what this was. 

He tore the strip off the top of the envelope, sneezing when a puff of padding material puffed into the air and his nose. Stiles laughed and blessed him when he glared at him. Sliding his hand into the envelope, he wrapped it around something small and round, freezing as a sense of familiarity washed over him. Holding his breath and closing his eyes, he withdrew the item.

Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and then his palm. His breath was stolen by the sight of a keychain nearly identical to the one his mom had given him sitting there. The only difference was this one had a silver keyring where his other was gold. “How?” he gasped out.

“Saw the search history on my computer when I was trying to find a website I’d accidentally closed out,” Stiles told him. “I remembered your keychain and figured you were looking for a replacement.”

“I couldn’t...I couldn’t find one,” Derek said.

“Etsy is a lifesaver sometimes,” Stiles said, smiling at Derek’s blank look. “We’ll look at it later.”

Derek looked down at the keychain, knowing it wouldn’t glow until it had been charged by light exposure but he could already picture the warmth. As they pulled up in front of Stiles' house, the area around them plunging into darkness when he shut off the headlights, Derek felt himself freeze until the glow appeared around Stiles again.

“You coming?” he asked, as he opened the door to get out.

Derek nodded, hurrying to keep up with Stiles’ glow until they reached the house. Stiles turned the lights on as soon as they were inside. “You know where everything is,” he told him. “Get into some dry clothes and make yourself at home.”

He headed up the stairs to Stiles’ room while he went into the kitchen, the sounds of the fridge opening and the gas oven turning on following him. The upstairs hallway was dim, almost dim enough to freeze him, but he managed to knock Stiles’ door open before it could happen. Instead, he found himself freezing for a different reason. 

A glow was coming from behind Stiles’ bed; not quite enough to light up the whole room but enough for Derek to be able to reach over and turn on the light. Moving towards the wall, he saw plugged into the socket just below the window Derek would climb through when he snuck in, was an exact replica of the nightlight from Laura. It hadn’t ever been there before, Derek only came in when the lights were on or the glow from the computer was bright enough.

“This is new,” he said when he heard Stiles come into the room behind him.

“You’re afraid of the dark,” Stiles stated, his voice soft and unwavering, even when Derek whirled around and growled at him. Holding his hands up, Stiles took another step closer. “No one else knows. I’m observant, remember?” Derek nodded, still a bit thrown off. “I got the nightlight so you know you’re always safe here.”

Derek glanced back at the nightlight before looking back at Stiles and then down at the keychain still clutched in his hand. “You glow,” he whispered and he shouldn’t have been surprised when Stiles gave a half-grin and a shrug. “You knew.”

“I wasn’t sure it worked. I couldn’t see it,” he said. “I spelled it to only work for you.” 

“Why?”

“I wanted you to know you were safe with me,” he said. “I may only be a puny human with a little bit of a Spark, but you’re safe with me.” He took another step closer and Derek reached a hand out, smiling when Stiles laid his hand in his.

“Stiles…” he began, cutting off when the power in the house went out, Stiles immediately beginning to glow. “My fear chaser. My nightlight.”

He used the hand he was holding to pull him into an embrace and buried his face in his neck, breathing in the scent and allowing himself to relax into the safety Stiles provided him. No matter where he went, he knew Stiles would be by his side, his light guiding him home.

_ When I don't know which way is right  
Love me when it's hard, I promise that I'm not  
Leaving from outside  
And when I fall apart, promise in the dark  
You'll be my nightlight _

**Author's Note:**

> Come say 'hi' on tumblr. I'm 'josjournal' over there.


End file.
